Your English exam may contain a few banana peels. Whoops! Before you know it, those pesky banana peels have caught you out and you slipped up!
Read on to find out how to avoid stepping on those tricky banana peels in your English Paper 1.
Situational Writing
Banana Peel 1: You did not write in the correct tone. How do you know whether to write in a formal or an informal tone? Check who you are writing to. If it is a family member or friend, use an informal tone. However, be careful! An informal tone does not mean you can use casual language with slang and abbreviations/contractions. You should still be respectful and use proper English.
Banana Peel 2: You did not extract information accurately from the stimulus. You can use a highlighter to highlight the important details to ensure you do not make any mistakes when transferring information to your writing. Remember you have six content points so you should include all six to guarantee full marks for content. This should be straightforward, but you would be surprised how many students lose marks for transferring the wrong date or day, or other such details!
Banana Peel 3: You did not finish off well. Your final sentences should sum up the purpose of the writing. For example, if you are trying to persuade someone to do something you should wrap up with a sentence like, “I hope you will consider my suggestion and I look forward to hearing your positive reply soon.” Always return to the purpose in your closing sentence to end on a strong note. Remember that in formal writing, if you know the name of the recipient you should end with “Yours sincerely”, but if you do not know the name, the sign-off should be “Yours faithfully”.
Continuous Writing
Banana Peel 1: You did not use both the topic and the picture together. You should not answer the topic without referring to the picture, and you should not use the picture without answering the topic. Both of these errors will cost you a lot of marks. Make sure that you choose one picture that you can use to answer the topic without contriving an unrealistic plot. The picture must be used meaningfully, not just briefly mentioned. A good way to judge meaningful usage is whether the picture could be omitted from your composition and the story would still make sense. If it does, the picture has not been meaningfully used.
Banana Peel 2: You did not plan. A common mistake is not to plan. Students think that planning is time wasted, but that is one big banana peel! Planning can turn a mediocre composition into a good one by ensuring that the Story Mountain is followed, which gives a proper shape to the story.
Banana Peel 3: You tried to fit in memorised phrases, vocabulary, and even plots. It is tempting to think that this will help you write well, but instead it usually leads to unrelated plots being shoehorned to fit, which results in a weak story or worse, going completely off topic. What about memorised vocabulary and phrases? Examiners can usually tell when a student has engineered a sentence to fit in a word that is not appropriate in the context. It is better to be authentic and write in a way that is natural and genuine.
Follow these tips and you will easily be able to dodge those banana peels in future! Stay tuned for our next blog post on the banana peels in Paper 2. In the meantime, check out our comprehensive guide with expert exam tips to help your P4-6 child score well in Paper 1 and Paper 2.
These expert tips were brought to you by our in-house Curriculum Team.
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